SELECTED ART WORKS 2000-2010
OUM EL DOUNIA
PHOTOGRAPHy, COLLAGE & TAPESTRY
Oum El Dounia, (Arabic, 'The Mother of the World'). Digitally woven tapestry, 2007. Installation view, Smithsonian Museum, Freer & Sackler gallery, 2015-16. From the photo-collage, Oum El Dounia, commissioned by and collection La Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain. © Lara Baladi, 2000.
BORG EL AMAL
IN SITU architectural & sound installation
Borg El Amal, (Arabic, ‘Tower of Hope'). Sound and architectural ephemeral installation in situ. First Prize, Cairo Contemporary Art Biennale, Egypt. © Lara Baladi, 2008/09.
To view publication of the Hope project and Donkey Symphony, click here.
Above: Donkey Symphony. Excerpt. Burrolandia Donkeys (Spain), cello, soprano and violin. 19 mins. Sound component of Borg El Amal (Tower of Hope) composed by Nathaniel Robin Mann, Madrid, Spain. © Lara Baladi, 2008.
Above left: Donkey Symphony performed in collaboration with the Kiev Kamera Orchestra, Kiev Contemporary Art Biennial, 2012.
Donkey Symphony performed in an abandoned silo, Art Omi residency projects, NY, USA. © Lara Baladi, 2014.
DIARY OF THE FUTURE
ArchitectUre, digital montages, PHOTOGRAPHY & Sound installation
Qabr El Zaman, (Arabic, the ‘Tomb of Time’). Architectural Installation. Grey raw marble, photographs printed on porcelain, trompe l’oeil wall paintings and permanent pigment print of digital photo-collage on gesso-coated aluminum panel. Commissioned for and collection of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar. © Lara Baladi, 2010.
[...] Black veins—rivulets—interlaced at the bottom and all around the insides of the cups, each line telling a story to those who knew how to decipher the secret language. This tradition is so anchored in our culture that turning the cup upside down, even if no one around can read it, has become part of the coffee-drinking ritual. Alone, or together, we instinctively look into the bottom, hoping to find answers to the questions our soul is asking. Every day, I carried the tray with the used and labeled cups outside to the table in that garden of my childhood. There, I photographed the inside of each cup—and the labels, at first, to keep track of whose each one was. But my eyes were so close to my subject, I fell into a kind of timelessness. I followed the ants walking on the saucers, became obsessed with the tiniest details, how the wet coffee dregs made patterns on the labels or how some of these labels were cut from my grandmother’s stack of hieroglyph-printed stationery, the same that she’d used for as long as I could remember [...]
Vodka Camomile, Cocktail for a Revolution. Excerpt. 'Sketch' for a book, published in Agni, Boston University, 2016.
JUSTICE FOR THE MOTHER — PERFUMES & BAZAAR
DIGITAL MONTAGES
Justice for the Mother and Perfumes & Bazaar, The Garden of Allah. Installation views, Occidentalism, Cairo and The Beauty of Distance, Sydney Biennial, 2010. Digital montages, 560X248CM. Material variable. © Lara Baladi, 2016/07.
ROBA VECCHIA
IN SITU ARCHITECTURE, SOFTWARE & PHOTOGRAPHY INSTALLATION
Roba Vecchia, (Italian, Ragman). Installation view, Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art. Life size kaleidoscope, rear projection on mirrors, specially written software. 1120X245CM. Egypt. © Lara Baladi, 2006.
LIGHT UPON LIGHT: ART SINCE THE 1960s
Noor Festival, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Light Upon Light includes 30 masterworks of light art divided into four sectional “rays” that survey light as an artistic medium: “Perceiving Light,” “Experiencing Light,” “Projecting Light,” and “Environmental Light.” Each ray blends time and unites established artists of diverse geographic origin.
The show Light Upon Light: Light Art since the 1960s – that includes key works by early pioneers Dan Flavin and James Turrell – is a ground-breaking event for culture in Saudi Arabia; it’s their first-ever exhibition of light art. Planning and executing a project of such a large scale in the middle of a pandemic constitutes a small miracle in itself, but I believe we are laying the groundwork for other historic exhibitions to come forward in Saudi Arabia.
DUBAI
PHOTO ESSAY
Photo-essay commissioned by Bidoun Magazine, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. © Lara Baladi, 2005.
BALADI COLLECTION
T-SHIrTS DESIGN
Baladi Collection is a T-shirt collection inspired by the Egyptian term, baladi, 'my country' and/or 'kitsch.' 9 logos borrowed from locally produced Egyptian goods tell the History of Egypt in the twentieth century on each T-shirt.
Postcard and installation views. Espace SD, Beirut Lebanon. ©Lara Baladi, 2005.
SANDOUK EL DOUNIA
PHOTOgraphy, collage, tapestry
Sandouk El Dounia, (Arabic, ‘the World in a Box’ and also the name of the precursor to the moving image). Digitally woven tapestry. 780X650 CM. 2007. Installation view, Penelope's Labour, Cini Foundation, Venice Biennale, 2011. From the reproduction of the original photo-collage, Sandouk El Dounia. © Lara Baladi.
AL FANOUS EL SEHRY
In Situ installation
Al Fanous El Sehry, (Arabic, ‘The Magic Lantern’). Installation view, Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art. Medical x-rays montaged in Photoshop, 9 meter diameter iron Islamic star, 16 light boxes, acetate prints, 29 meter circumference. Egypt. © Lara Baladi, 2002.
ABOUT INSTALLATIONS
Subcontracted Nations, Universe in Universe, 2018
Filming Revolution, Alisa Lebow, 2015
Perspectives: Lara Baladi, CITY DC, Kriston Capps, 2015
Lara Baladi: Narrator of Invisible Things, Dior Magazine, n12, 2015
Summer Autumn Winter and Spring: Conversations with Artists from the Arab World, 2015
Before and After: and the Suspension of Breath in Between, Positionen, Steidl, 2013
A Conversation with Lara Baladi, Afterimage, Vol. 39 n5, 2011
Lara Baladi: Rituals of Hope, Nafas Magazine, Universe in Universe, 2011
